Relational spatial topologies for historical geographical information

Abstract

Research on time and data models for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has focused mainly in the representation of temporal geographical entities and implementation of temporal databases. Many temporal GIS database structures have been proposed but most of them just provide principles, not the recipe for the design. Owing to the manipulation of the large quantity of geographical information and the slow response time, few implementations exist. This paper presents a relational method of storing and retrieving spatial and temporal topologies. Two-level state topologies are proposed: a state topology for a set of geographical entities and a state topology for a single geographical entity.

From a temporal perspective, these two-level state topologies may also be viewed as two-level time topologies: a time topology for all geographical entities in a GIS database and a time topology for a single geographical entity. Based on these state and time topologies, a detailed storage approach for historical geographical information is provided.